Nikkei Crashes 1000 Points, Tumbles Into Bear Market

Update: Japan's Nikkei and the broader Topix indices fell over 1,000 points, or 5% in Tuesday morning trading to a 20-month low on the heels of the worst S&P 500 Christmas Eve crash on record. The Nikkei average hit an intra-day low of 19,138.88, or -5.09%, while the broader Topix was also around 5% lower.

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A few hours after the S&P tumbled over 2.7%, sliding into a bear market for the first time in a decade, Japan's Nikkei 225 - which had been sliding gradually for the past week - dropped sharply by over 3.2% at the open...

... becoming the latest index to tumble into a bear market, sliding over 20% from its October 2 peak.

Meanwhile, the broader Topix index - which had already entered a bear market from its January 2018 highs - plunged even more, dumping over 4.3% and was trading at levels last seen in November 2016, as more than 2 years of gains have been largely wiped out in just the past 3 months as the Christmas Eve rout launched in the US goes global.